The forming or wet section of a Fourdrinier consists mainly of the head box and the forming wire, or fabric. Its main purpose is to generate consistent slurry, or paper pulp, for the forming wire. A breast roll, several foils, suction boxes and a couch roll commonly make up the rest of the forming section. The press section and dryer section follow the forming section to further remove water from the paper sheet. The paper pulp is deposited atop the forming wire or a forming fabric. The pulp is then dewatered to create a paper sheet.
Adjustable foils have been utilized previously for dewatering operations in Fourdrinier machines. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,169,500 to Mejdell, incorporated by reference thereto, discloses an angle adjustable foil for a paper making machine. In Mejdell, a rigid foil member is pivoted by a cam-actuated adjustment mechanism to change the angle of the foil blade. This tends to move the foil blade in the cross-machine direction which opens a gap between the wet paper stock and the foil blade. The opened gap causes a loss of vacuum on the paper sheet. An aim of the present invention is to overcome this inefficiency.